1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a computer implemented method and apparatus for creating a data structure. More specifically, to a method and apparatus for creating a data structure comprising a non-linear data object with typed data fields and field names from a common gateway interface type input string.
2. Background Art
When writing a common gateway interface (CGI) program to run under a hypertext markup language (HTML) document server, input data to the CGI program comes in one long text string in the format: EQU "KeyWordName1=value1&KeyWordName2=value2& . . . EQU KeyWordNameN=valueN".
This data can be cumbersome to parse into individual values. It is much preferred, for ease of use for many users of computing systems, to present data organized into useful records and fields.
For example, users of IBM AS/400 series machines tend to be most familiar using and viewing data as records and fields in a database. Also, such users are typically familiar with the use of data description specification (DDS) files to organize data into useful records and fields.
It is, therefore, an object of the invention to provide a method for organizing CGI input data, using a DDS file description as the template, into useful records and fields; that is, a data structure comprising a non-linear data object with typed data fields and field names derived from a common gateway interface type input string.
It is a further object of the invention to provide in that non-linear data object data which is converted to the proper data type for each field, such as alphanumeric, integer, or decimal.